


The Cruelest Month

by togina



Series: Howling Commandos [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Howling Commandos - Freeform, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, WWII
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-04-30 09:59:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5159516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/togina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve rescues everyone from the factory.  So the Commandos are rescued, but they know better than to believe that they're <em>safe</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cruelest Month

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr, [here](http://toli-a.tumblr.com/post/97608068553/because-lquacker-is-a-delightful-muse-and-loves). All credit to lquacker, the idea generator for this - I love the Commandos, but I just write as prompted!

Hydra had killed most of the 100th battalion before they’d captured the 107th - bulldozed them with tanks and fired guns at them like Martians really  _had_ invaded back in ‘38. Bucky guessed they weren’t interested in a yellow army, even if Germany was allied with Japan.

“Japan and China ain’t the same damn place!” Morita snapped, the third time that night he’d nearly busted Fromm’s nose for being a stupid kid with a big gob.  “And anyway, I’m a goddamn American, you stupid kraut.”

Bucky wasn’t sure how they’d missed Morita, when they were killing all the others. Probably because the private wasn’t much more than five feet tall, skin and bones from too long in this prison. A mouth on him that should have gotten him lasered to death before Bucky learned his name.

Morita talked back. He talked  _first_ , when everybody knew that the way to get by in this place was to keep your trap shut and your shoulders hunched. Too slow, too weak, and they shot you on sight. Too tall, too handsome - and you vanished up the stairs, only to reappear a few days later in the crematorium.

The 107th had teased Hudgens for being such a pretty boy, joked that the Army should have made  _him_ Captain America. Hydra had taken him the second day, sent him back down to the ovens with the pain frozen into his cold face.

* * *

Dernier had been in the French Resistance, Jones translated, while the Frenchman smoked the cigarettes Dugan had stolen out of a guard’s pocket, something he claimed was “an old circus trick.” He’d heard of other crematoriums, other camps that didn’t need lasers to be cruel.

And if Jim could just keep his mouth shut it would be fine, if he could just tilt his head so that the guards didn’t catch a glimpse of his slanted eyes and shoot him for being the grandson of a railer, something Morita called  _nisei_.

But Jim couldn’t, of course, and when a guard kicked Fromm for falling he was startled to find a short, oriental man up in his face. “You do that to your dogs, too?” Morita wondered, hands curled into useless fists at his side. “Bet you feed them better.”

Bucky hadn’t enlisted. Not like Dernier, protecting his country, or Jones, proving his worth as a man. Not like Morita, who’d snuck away to join the 100th when he heard they’d reached the mainland from Hawaii. He'd had something to protect back home - but he’d been drafted despite that, and all of them knew there would be no going home, not unless the Americans flew in and bombed the factory to the ground.

Morita was scrawny and mouthy and too stupid to be scared, and muscle memory had Bucky stepping in front of the armored fist heading for Jim’s face.

Bucky wasn’t much to look at, when the guard finished. But he’d forgotten to keep his shoulders hunched, keep his head down. When Zola made the rounds that night, he stood in front of Bucky’s cell for a moment. Two. And he smiled.

* * *

Morita looked even smaller, laden down with all the Hydra weapons that he could find in the burnt out shell of the factory. Falsworth had offered to take a few and Jim had snarled, nearly jabbed a rifle into Monty’s gut.

Falsworth had backed off quick, fallen in step behind Morita who was marching behind Fromm who was following Barnes. That was the order the Hydra guards had put them in, months before, walking down the line to pick up their meager meals twice a day, eyes on the floor as Zola selected the evening’s experiments.

Dernier and Jones had commandeered the tank, loading in the worst of the wounded before driving promptly into a tree. They’d rearranged after that, Dernier standing so that he could tell Jones which way to go, whispering even though there was no one to hear him shout a litany of French commands and curses.

Dugan had gotten Gwerder’s camera, in the rescue. Gwerder, who had backed away when the other guards crowded close to kick the prisoners who had fallen, to splash boiling broth into their faces and drag their guns over the bars at night when the prisoners tried to sleep - Gwerder, who hadn’t joined them, not because he was squeamish around blood or pain, but because he wanted to  _frame the shot_. Because he wanted to memorialize their pain, print the record of their suffering and hold it close.

He wandered around the marching mismatched soldiers, snapping pictures with old film. (The first set of pictures printed like ghosts, all double exposed. Morita and his arsenal of weapons scowled, overlaid with Dernier screaming as Kruger smashed a bowl into his skull. Reporters had asked, and Phillips had told them there was no footage of the march home. No pictures of the triumph that weren’t overshadowed by the pain.) When Dum Dum spun around and saw their rescuer - Steve Rogers, Barnes had called him - watching him, he ducked his head and stowed the camera before the blond man could take it away.

“He looks like Hudgens,” Fromm murmured after they’d made camp for the night. There was no dinner, not even stale bread and broth, but it wouldn’t be the first time they hadn’t been fed. Zola had tested the effects of starvation on their work. Still, the guards generally let them talk during dinner, busy creating new ways to torture them into the night.

“He looks like Captain America,” Falsworth corrected, slouching so that he wasn’t taller than Fromm. “Wearing your bloody flag, isn’t he? Just like in the picture shows.”

Dernier sidled up slow, wary of the man sitting by the campfire with his arm slung around the sergeant they’d all believed dead. Zola never sent his prisoners back alive. “Voila!” he announced, keeping his voice low, slinging out ration bars from beneath the jacket he’d taken from a guard.

“We found them in the tank,” Jones explained, coming over from where he’d been passing out rations to the other soldiers. “Not enough for two days, but better than what they’d been feeding us inside.”

“Who wants to feed the American flag?” Falsworth wondered, gesturing at the broad-shouldered blond who still hadn’t released Barnes from his grip. He kept his hand low, kept his head out of the circle of flickering, campfire light.

No one volunteered. When Steve Rogers lifted his head to scan the camp, Dernier and Jones dropped into crouches so that they were at the same height as the other men, hidden in the shadows at the edges of camp. Only the gravely wounded stayed near the campfire - all the other soldiers had spread out into the dark, making themselves harder to find.

“Oh, give me those,” Morita snapped, wrenching the extra bars out of Dernier’s hand. “Someone needs to feed Barnes, at least, before Monty’s Captain America squeezes his stuffing out.”

“Who do you reckon he  _is_?” Jones asked, as Jim stomped off toward the fire, holding a pistol in his free hand. “Leading a solo mission like that? Parachuting behind enemy lines?”

“Sounds like Captain America to me,” Dugan said, rolling his eyes. “Too bad he didn’t bring the motorcycle with the broads on it.”

“The Army wouldn’t send a showgirl to save us,” Falsworth decided, tugging Dugan’s bowler off and juggling it.

“The Army didn’t send anyone to save us.” Dernier and Jones leaped backward and scrambled away, moving their fingers out of stomping range before realizing that the man squatting behind them was Sgt. Barnes.

“Sarge,  _shite_ , you scared the living daylights out of me!” Dum Dum’s surprise boomed across the camp, louder than he’d intended. Dugan flinched away from the sound of his own voice, grabbing for the bowler to cover his head.

“What do you mean, the Army didn’t send anyone?” Jones asked, staring worriedly across the camp to where Morita sat sharing a ration bar with the blond giant. “Where’d he come from, then?”

“And why aren’t you dead?” Monty added, jabbing at Barnes’ arm with a filched cigarette before offering it to the sergeant. “We thought you were dead.”

“Maybe I am,” Barnes answered, smiling tiredly behind the cloud of smoke and the glowing ember of the fag. “Maybe I’m a ghost.”

“Oui, bien sur,” Dernier agreed, lighting his own cigarette with a flourish. “Mais - qui ees zat?” And he flung one arm out toward the blond man. His movements were bold, his courage either from the dark or from the cigarette that proved he must be free, or dreaming.

“ _Zat_ ,” Barnes echoed, blowing a smoke ring at Dum Dum, “is Steven Grant Rogers, otherwise known as Captain America.”

“Steven - wait, Steve Rogers, like  _Stevie_?” Dugan queried, choking on his ration bar. “The loudmouth sweetheart you had waiting for you back home?”

“He's  _not_  my -” Jacques made loud smooching noises at Gabe, and Sarge huffed and focused on his smoke. “Fine, you bastards. Yes, it’s Steve Rogers, Brooklyn born and bred.”

“I thought he was a scrawny little thing?” Monty put in, leaning in to light his next fag off Barnes’. He hadn’t warned Sarge well enough, though, and the brown-haired petty officer flinched when Falsworth got too near, rasped the first few digits of his serial number before shoving the words back behind his teeth.

“Yeah.” Barnes nodded, and the others pretended they hadn’t heard the rest. “So did I.”


End file.
